Sneak peek: New 'Point Break' gets extreme

Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

Point Break is making waves again on the big screen, with a heap of extreme sports and a couple of familiar names along for the thrill ride.

In Kathryn Bigelow's original 1991 action movie, Keanu Reeves starred as rookie FBI agent Johnny Utah and the late Patrick Swayze was the Zen criminal surfer Bodhi. Luke Bracey (The Best of Me) and Édgar Ramirez (Deliver Us From Evil) respectively take on those iconic roles in a new Point Break, directed by Ericson Core (Invincible) and in theaters Christmas Day.

There's surfing in this one, but also motocross racing down steep mountains, dangerous rock climbing, extreme snowboarding and exhilarating flights in windsuits, all filmed in wide-open spaces over 11 countries symbolizing the redo's larger-scale global view.

But the spirit of the original remains the same, says Ramirez. "We're always looking for a new and bigger and larger sense of freedom in our lives. That's something very human and very rooted in us."

Bracey's Utah isn't a former college quarterback, but instead a gifted snowboarder and motocross racer who feels out of place as a fed. He's assigned to infiltrate Bodhi and his gang of environmental warriors (or terrorists, depending on the perspective), who are pulling off impossible physical feats while also breaking laws, under the auspices of giving back to the people.

The first film had the bad guys robbing banks to fund "an endless summer of surfing," Core says, but the new group is trying "to take it to a different level."

The director sees Bodhi as a Robin Hood of sorts, and Ramirez agrees that his character's criminal activity does more than get his adrenaline pumping. "He uses the thrill as a vehicle to serve what lies behind the rush. How deeply can you connect to yourself by becoming one with the geological forces of the earth?"

Swayze's performance is a seminal one, Core adds, but Ramirez being Venezuelan and having a different take "represents something outside of that local Southern California vibe and gives it a slightly larger world stage."

With Bracey's Utah, the Australian actor says, "there's still that common thread of going after something, finding out who he is, where he belongs in the world and also pushing himself as far as he can to find it."

Utah gets to know Bodhi and realizes the antagonists "are probably more kindred spirits than he expected," Core says.

Adds Ramirez: "After becoming friends, they have to go in different directions — that's the tragedy and the beauty of the movie."

Along the way, there are nods to the '91 Point Break, including a hat tip to the mask-wearing Ex-Presidents, and another "really beautiful homage" that Bracey says, "I was so over the moon to be able to do."

He and Ramirez worked hard to capture a sense of brotherhood similar to the one sowed nearly 25 years by Reeves and Swayze.

"We're good mates now," Bracey says. "He's trying to teach me Spanish here and there, and I'm trying to teach him a little bit about surfing. It was a really symbiotic relationship where we fed off each other's energy."